pat loughery

I met last week for the first time with a spiritual director. The time was beneficial, and I think the relationship will grow in a great way.

These are the three things he encouraged me to pursue, based on the strands of themes that he heard me talking about and his own

1. Continue to pursue establishing my own Rule of Life, prayerfully, and being careful not to be too strict so that what I want to do becomes legalistic.

I’ll be blogging a lot more about this, but I continue to think and write about this, and find great resources to help as well.

2. Practice the spiritual discipline of sabbath.

I’m at a phase of life in which I find it difficult to make or find time to rest. Work schedule, having young kids, and being in a doctoral program means I don’t get a lot of breather time. But last weekend I took the whole weekend off except for a few email conversations, and played with my kids. It was a forced time, as my wife was on retreat, but it was a lot of fun just hanging with the kids and playing in the yard and park, mowing the lawns, weeding, wrestling with the kids, and all the other goodies we got to do.

3. Consider the practice of centering prayer.
As a meditative practice, centering prayer simply gives you a way to focus your attention on God, and rest in the presence of the Trinity. I blogged about Steve’s reference for me here.

I continue to dig deeper in these three areas, each of which has its own way of helping to shape me.